MY FATHER, LISTEN:

By Alice Yue

 

      to some extent, you decide how far you sleep tonight.

beneath the coupling of the poplar trees

                     you watch your father’s childhood dim to dusk.

       a body sent home; smoke rising from a tenement chimney.

your mother kneeling half-dressed at the kang

                     her hand shimmering kerosene-gold

      the smell of jasmine rising from under her nails.

a red sweater. america in a photo flash.

                       you, lying face up in a room with starlight

       the innumeration of years coming into perspective across your face.

heilongjiang: the dragon’s mouth

                      opening into the bay at dalian

       where you hold me on your shoulders

and start to sing: a whisper like the stars as they dissipate

                       into coal-smoke. the body of your mother

        stretched against you in the half-dark

woman as great wall in two-room home.

                      you lift without waking, your body superpositioned

      over black sky like stars and call home.

you hear your mother’s voice. you stroke jasmine

                     across your lips, taste the poplars as they shed

       snow like qipaos. the moon falls over you

cool and urgent. downtown

                     so does the rain. so does the rain

        where your father sleeps faceless beside your mother

a photograph of herself. in photographs

                      you long for home. i kneel with you

       where the rain freezes hard and

forgive you for loving me.

                       to some extent, i decide how much i ask for.

        between the dim and the dusk, i ask

for just a part, your voice

                        living back to me after time.

 

Alice’s Bio:

Alice Yue studies English, Creative Writing, and Education at Rutgers University. She writes fiction and poetry and has previously been published in Shards magazine.